March 5, 2025 • 32 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 3 (03/05) - Todd Bensman comes on the show to talk about how the worst border crisis in US history is officially over now that Pres. Trump has been in office. More on the wasteful spending in DC. More on the EPA's slush fund that the Biden Administration created for them. Carolyn Webb de Macias, Mayor Karen Bass's Chief of Staff should be getting more blame for the negligent response from LA officials during the wildfires.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four o'clock, and then after four
we turned into a podcast, John Cobelt Show on Demand,
and that's where you go to listen to whatever you missed.
Now we're going to start this hour. I didn't know
if we'd ever get to this point to have a
(00:22):
conversation like we're going to have now with Todd Benzman.
Todd Bensman is the investigative journalist. He writes for the
Center for Immigration Studies and Todd has been covering the
border for about five years and it is remarkable what
he has seen, what he has explained. He wrote a
(00:44):
book on it called Overrun and now There's suddenly no
more problem at the border. And one of the things
he's written about this week at CIS dot org. There's
also an excerpt of it on the Daily Wire dot
com is how it blew to hell all the stupid
theories that were being pushed at us by politicians and
(01:06):
bureaucrats and media people and activists and non governmental groups,
the idea that well, you know, we have to go
look for the root causes of it. Maybe it's our
climate policy. It was never any of that. It was
just enforced the law and boom encounters. Your down ninety
(01:26):
six percent at the border. All the other stuff was
a lot of hot gas, and they knew it was
hot gas. But we've been hearing about this garbage for
twenty twenty five years. Let's get Todd. Ben's been on Todd.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Are you going to be out of work? Are you
gonna have to open up an ice cream shop? Or what?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Oh? God? You know, I'm thinking, well, there's a cartel
war gearing up down there. Maybe on that list, right,
But I mean it's true what you say, the greatest
mass migration in crisis in US history ever to have
stricken the United States. And I think, really any country
in the world is over. And I declare that openly
(02:12):
and with confidence at CIS dot orgon a big long
column that published yesterday, and I'd say that it took
all of about one hour to shut it down. We
are now at the lowest numbers that we've seen in
you know, at least half a century, maybe forever. And
(02:35):
we didn't need the big Senate bill that Harris was
always campaigning about. Oh, the Senate Bill, the Senate bill.
If only I had the Senate bill, we could have
stopped this thing. But Trump killed the Senate bill, and
we need the Senate bill. No, we didn't. We didn't
need the Senate bill. We didn't have to ever fix
root causes of other costies that right, root causes. That one.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It was getting too warm, so they were moving north
where the weather is cooler. That's what they were selling.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
None of that. All of it was bogus. All of
it was bogus. We knew it from the start. I
think I've been saying that to your audience now for
at least a couple of years. That's not what it was.
It never was. It was that they just simply let
everybody in. That's it's really quite a simple thing. You
if you let everybody in who comes to the border,
(03:30):
they'll be happy to drop the five or ten grand
in smuggling fees to do it. If you close, if
you make it, if you expel and deport them, they're
not willing to spend five or ten thousand dollars. You wouldn't,
I wouldn't, Nobody I knows, nobody I know would do
would drop cash like that if you knew you were
(03:50):
going to be expelled. And so Trump came in and
just did detention, deportation, expulsion. That's all. That's all it took.
It was over in an hour to sit within by
one o'clock on inauguration day, it was over.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And it was always in the laws, in the law, yeah,
the Immigration Naturalization Act. All you do is follow what
you're permitted to do, and you can drop it down
to near zero.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Right. And so I just published a piece I mean
literally fifteen minutes ago on the Daily Wires. Go to
the Daily Wires, got that in front of me here, right,
And I go into a lot more detail about these
other theories that the Democrats would put up to the
American public and sell, relentlessly, sell these theories about how
(04:44):
complex and long term and really we all just should
ball up into a fetal position and take the beating.
We just have no choice in any of this. It
just is happening to us, and we we just have
to manage it in like pain manage or something. Uh.
And I go into a lot more detail about the
(05:04):
you know why the Lankfort senateville that they that they
literally hinge the the Democrats hinge their entire presidential campaign
on that thing. We need the Senate bill and root
causes and climate change and all these other things that
we just have no choice but to just take it.
(05:24):
And all of that is buried now. It's intellectually untenable
to ever claim those things again, ever again, because there's
only one theory left standing in its mine and Trump's,
which is that if you close the gates, they stop coming.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, which to me was obvious. You know, if you
shut the door, nobody can come through. I I but
they always like to prattle on. And God, I must
have read this and seen it on television a thousands
of times, all the complex root cause it's a men
a multiply fascinated issue. It's like, no, it's not. It's
(06:05):
like your front door. If you lock it, nobody's getting
in the house. I was just baffled by all this.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Well, yeah, I called it like a revolution in common sense,
a common sense revolution, and immigration is like a perfect
example of that. There's nothing complicated about illegal immigration over
the border. There never was. It was always a super
It was so simple that nobody could believe that it
(06:34):
wasn't complex, you know, but there it is. You know, immigrants.
You know, I've interviewed thousands of immigrants over the last
four or five years on the trail, And where do
you think I came up with this crazy idea from them?
Why are you coming now? I would always ask them,
why are you coming now? Why didn't you come three
(06:55):
years ago? When Trump was in office. They're saying, well,
Biden opened the border, letting us in. That's why. I mean,
it's just not complicated.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Now that that's all there is to it. And I
think for the rest of our lives, no president's going
to try this again.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Well, you know, I don't know about that. You know.
What I'm what I'm arguing for is a deep burial
in the dung heap of bad, debunked ideas, policy ideas,
and you know, to salt the earth on top of
it so that they can never get out again, To
lock the crypt doors, you know, forever, and weld them
(07:38):
shut so that these these crazy ideas can never ever
get out into the public again. Uh, this is the
only theory that matters. It's not a theory now, it's
a proven fact on the ground. What how to how
to stop mass migration. That's it. And also oh yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
No, no, go ahead, go ahead, finish.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, you know, I was going to mention that, you know,
we spent on these other crazy theories, you know, billions
and billions of dollars. I mean, we gave Central America
I don't know, six or seven billion dollars to rebuild
their countries so that you know, people wouldn't want to leave.
And the entire time that we were giving them all
(08:24):
these billions of dollars, they were all leaving. And they're
still leaving, well not now, but you know, they all
the way up until Inauguration Day, they were leaving. And
one other thing is, you know, there are compliments to expulsion, deportation,
and detention, and one of them is a threat of
(08:48):
tariffs on Mexico to get their military out there and
give us a second layer of cordon, a second you know,
fence on their side where And they've been doing that
for a while now, rounding up immigrants on their side
of the border and shifting them back down to their
south and making them self deport what's happening now is
(09:10):
in addition to just there being you know, eight thousand
for the month of February eighty three hundred, which sounds
like a lot maybe, but compared to three hundred and
fifty thousand a month, eight thousand is a is a dream.
We haven't seen anything like that in many, many decades.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So that's the.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, they're reverse migration now, they're actually going the other
way through the Darien Gap to get away from our border.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Before you go, I just kind of mention one thing
you wrote actually made me laugh because you wrote about
the so called root causes strategy when Biden sent Kamala
Harris to the border with the theory that the well
what she said that the re and for all the
(10:02):
illegal crossings was because of extensive storm damage to do
due to extreme climate. We're looking at drought in a
region where agriculture is one of the most traditionally important
basis for their economy, and we're looking at what happens
in terms of food scarcity as a result of that.
So is climate change and drought and storm damage. I
don't know how you have storm damage and drought at
(10:23):
the same time, but you know it's those kind of
misdirection plays. And who looks up the climate of guatemale
El Salvador who pays attention to the weather down there.
You know, people go, oh, I guess, so I got
And it was all scammers. It was a racket. It
was a lot of crap.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
It was I mean, it stands exposed as you know,
a mass fraud. I mean, it really was like a
gigantic Ponzi scheme. And the way they use these theories,
these debunk theories, these disgraced theories, is that they wait
them around over here on the left so that your attention,
(11:02):
they draw your attention like a shiny babble over here
while they're opening the gate over there. That's where the
action is. But they're telling you we're doing something over here,
we're doing something over here that that's meaningful, and while
we're doing it, we're just going to keep this gate open.
That's how they used these theories. And I hope I
(11:23):
wrote this piece in the Daily Wire because I mean,
I hope it just absorbs that these these are discredited
constructs now and they need to just be completely exposed
lest they ever be resurrected. Somehow. Somebody could come back with, oh,
we've got to adjust root causes again. And by the way.
(11:44):
I point out at length in the in the Daily
Wire piece that we borrowed this crazy theory from the
progressive liberals in Europe who came up with it in
the eighties in the nineties, and they tried it. And
there are all these stuff budies all over the Internet
that the that the Europeans did that showed that it
(12:06):
never ever worked no for them. Every time they tried it,
it never worked. And these are like long term clinical
trials right that they had over there, and still we
stole it so it can be resurrected. These they can
rise from the grave. They can be stitched back together
like Frankenstein and brought back.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Todd, I gotta go, I gotta do news. But thank
you for coming on again.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Okay, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Todd Ben's been Senior National Security Fellows Center for Immigration
Studies and read his stuff at CIS dot Oregon, the
Daily Wire dot com New Stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI A
M six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You can follow us at John Cobelt Radio on all
the social media platforms at John coblt Radio. The New
York Post has some uh has a story on more
of the waste that they're finding in Washington, d C.
Trump and Musk And they have discovered that the Biden
(13:10):
administration funneled at least twenty billion dollars into environmental groups,
most of which had only recently been founded, recently been invented,
like these were not existing, long running environmental groups doing
good works. I'll give you an example. In one case,
(13:33):
Kamala Harris handed over a check of almost seven billion
dollars to something called Climate United Fund tim Bethesda, Maryland.
It is so new it does not appear in the
IRS Charities database. There are no federal filings for this group.
(13:54):
They got seven billion dollars. This is what was going
on the world of criminals. They could sniff it. A
lot of money is being handed out time to create
the fake charity, the fake nonprofit, the fake environmental climate group.
(14:18):
They were incorporated in Delaware on November thirtieth, twenty twenty three.
Five months later, Kamala Harris gives them gives seven billion
dollars in April of twenty twenty four. Then they whipped
up a press release announcing that the Climate United Fund
announced the historic investment, noting the group's work delivers benefits
(14:42):
like cleaner air and increased energy security. Cleaner air and
increased energy security, they didn't even exist seven months earlier. No,
five months earlier, they didn't even exist. How much clean
air could they have have produced? How much energy security?
Five months earlier? There was no such thing. There's also
(15:05):
no public accounting of how plans to spend the seven
billion dollars. I don't know what Kamala Harris's involvement there is.
They use the phrase handed over the cash. Some projects
they have announced included an eleven million dollar pre development loan,
a solar project on tribal lands at eastern Oregon and Idaho. Well,
(15:29):
that sounds like a racket. A thirty two million dollar
energy project at the University of Arkansas. But that's just
a small piece of the seven billion. The cash came
from a three hundred and seventy billion dollar climate such
slush fund overseen by John Podesta. Is the name sound familiar.
(15:54):
Podesta is now a political consultant who is the chairman
of Hillary Clinton's using presidential run, and he was once
White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton. Joe Biden
named Podesta ahead the climate fund. The money came from
the Inflation Reduction Act. It was three hundred and seventy
(16:17):
billion dollars and Podesta gets to decide who gets the cash.
So these grifters, these these frauds and criminals started creating
fake climate nonprofits and next thing you know, Karen Kamala
Harris has given seven billion dollars to Climate United Fund.
(16:38):
Nobody knows who works there. They just say they're for
cleaner air. Well, I guess so. And now you know,
you got to go back to that, to that video
that we played. We played the audio of one of
(16:58):
the EPA employees, Brent Front. He was the young guy
drinking and he was caught on video by Project Veritas.
He was caught on video saying, yeah, we dumped out
twenty billion dollars at the end of the Biden administration.
It was like the Titanic and we're throwing gold bars
off the edge. He now has an attorney representing him
(17:24):
and he's claiming he expressed his personal views and he
claimed the comments had nothing to do with all this
money that's being shoveled out. But he does have a
lawyer because they're they're trying, they're trying to clawback all
this all this funding the Climate United Fund. A spokesperson
said to the New York Post that the EPA encouraged
(17:47):
groups to work with coalitions to receive the money. What
does that mean, the money sent to Climate United Fund,
he's being parked with another nonprofit called Calvert Impact. Well,
the New York Post found that there are three three
(18:07):
entities called Calvert Impact, all of them in Bethesda, Maryland,
So it's hard to track the flow of money. Got
more coming up on this when we come back. And
there's one government agency that has been cut to one
staff member because the law requires at least one staff member,
(18:29):
so everybody else was sent home. There's one guy left
all by himself.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
That's lonely.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
That is very long. It's probably going to fire a
file of mental health claim.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Really, you're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI
A sixty oh.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Trump's speech was rough last night. The Speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson, his chief of staff, got arrested for DUI
on the way home.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Yeah, I just had that in my newscast. Yes, you
weren't listening.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
No, I wasn't listening. But there was also a Democratic
congressman who was there at the speech from Texas and
he went, how many died? I know, there's no reason
to get that upset over the speech. Jeez, So one
dou wine, one death. Trump makes people go crazy.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Very divisive, very divisive.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
All right. I was talking about this, this three one
hundred and seventy five billion dollar slush fund that the
EPA had from Joe Biden. And if you hear any propaganda,
any media liars trying to tell you, oh, I haven't
really found real money, was no substantiated. Yeah it has.
(19:46):
I just told you. Kamala Harris, I was in charge
of giving seven billion dollars to something called the Climate
United Fund seven billion, but the company was just invented
five month before it got the check. And it turns
(20:06):
out the seven billion was parked in another bank account.
And this bank account what was in the name of,
let me get this right, Calvert Impact. So the money
didn't go to Climate United Fund, it went to Calvert Impact.
(20:28):
And there's three of them, and there are all these
companies are in Bethesda, Maryland, so it's hard to track
the flow of money. Then there's another group called Justice
Climate Fund that was just invented in twenty twenty three,
it's never submitted a tax filing. There's no information about
who runs it on the website. But they got almost
(20:50):
a billion dollars from the EPA. A billion dollars for
a company that didn't exist on paper until twenty twenty three,
exist with the IRS, and does not seem to have
anyone working for it if you go to the website.
But it drives transformative investments. We're focused on reducing pollution
(21:12):
nine hundred and forty million. See, they handed out the
money and then the criminals in Washington created a fake nonprofit.
This is what they do in Los Angeles with the
homeless money. It's the same thing. I guarantee you every
time they find out there's new homeless tax money coming in,
like we passed another homeless tax in November, more fake
nonprofits connected to all the criminals on the city council
(21:38):
start filing paperwork and they're going to get money. Here's
another group that the EPA shoveled money at, Power Forward
Communities registered in twenty twenty three. They got two billion dollars.
This is the one Stacy Abrams is involved in, the
former Democrat who ran for governor. She was a hot
(21:58):
thing for a five minute's power Forward Communities has one
hundred dollars in revenue according to its tax filing for
twenty twenty three. Another fake company Rewiring America. Another one
(22:18):
registered in December of twenty twenty four, and they're getting
a big load of money. This is massive, overwhelming corruption
by the billions. Then you had this announcement from DOGE.
There was something called the inter American Foundation. Everybody's getting
(22:44):
fired except for one guy they're keeping, the director of
the Office of Foreign Assistance. His name is Peter Morocco,
and that's it. Everybody else is gone.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Does he have to work in person?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Actually he's got another job. He's been put in charge
of cutting fore and spending. So really they got rid
of everybody, and then Musk and Trump put one of
their own guys in because according to law, there has
to be at least one employee. This agency had forty
(23:28):
eight people, average salary one hundred and thirty one thousand
dollars a year, and all they seemed to do was
send out checks to foreign entities. Morocco and DOJ officials
(23:52):
marched into the agency's headquarters on Monday and declared Morocco
to be in charge and demanded access to all the data.
It's supposed to issue grants to countries in Latin America
and the Caribbean for localized community led development. What communities
have they developed? In fact, that's the question I have
about the whole You always hear about developing countries, and
(24:16):
ever since I was a kid, it's been the same
list of developing countries. When do they get developed? They've
gotten hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of dollars from US,
and they never got developed. Why is that? Where'd the
money go? When you send money for development? What do
(24:36):
they spend it on? This inter American Foundation was created
in nineteen sixty nine. It's awarded almost six thousand grants,
almost a billion dollars, and it uh, oh, here's some
of the here's some of their grants. Oh you'll like
this nine hundred thousand dollars for alpaca farming and.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Oh that's okay.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
How packers are cute? They kind of look like lamas, right, yes, yeah,
three hundred and sixty five thousand dollars to reduce social
discrimination of recyclers in Bolivia.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I don't understand that exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
You're not supuzzed. So in Bolivia. Recyclers are socially discriminated.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Against because they recycle.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Because they recycle, I guess people they go into.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
People's trash, and so people they don't. They make fun
of them from putting into trash cards.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, you're a dumpster. These are dumpster divers, yes, And
they get mocked. And now they're getting three hundred and
sixty five thousand dollars to lessen the pain.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
The people are still going to mock them, right.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I would think, yeah, but at least they're a little richer.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Eight hundred thousand dollars for vegetable gardens and L Salvador.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Oh lovely.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I think the L. Salvadorans know how to plant vegetables.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Maybe they don't. They need some help.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
No wonder, people are hungry down there. They don't know
how to plant a seed. Three hundred thousand dollars to
promote cultural understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil. Seven hundred
thousand dollars to improve the marketability of mushrooms and peas
in Guatemala.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Okay, I'll do it for.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
A lot less. Well, people don't like mushrooms and peas,
so this is like an.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I'll promote it for like I said, a lot less.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Here's seven hundred thousand dollars to expand fruit and jam
sales in Honduras. Wow, here's a half million dollars to
improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador. Forty thousand dollars for
bee keeping in Brazil. So I think they're cutting about
(27:02):
one hundred percent of all the programs for this agency.
And Musk stuck in one of his own guys there
just to meet the requirements of the law. So I
don't think this guy's going to show up.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
I don't think so. I was gonna say if he does,
if he's lonely, maybe he'll bring his dog.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
More coming up.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
We are never going to let that incompetent idiot Los
Angeles mayor Karen Bass rest anything I can find. And
Daniel Gus says something today. We've we had him on yesterday,
Daniel Guss at substack dot substack dot com and he
covers city Hall and he found another name who's been
(27:49):
keeping her head down in this fire scandal. Where were
where was Carolyn Webb de Messias? You ever hear that name.
She is Bass's chief of staff. And why this matters
is Bass is claiming that nobody told her about the
(28:09):
fire warnings. And we found out yesterday that one hundred
people in LA government got an email on January second,
the Thursday before the Tuesday fire, including about fifteen Bass
staff members and chief of staff would be at the top.
(28:31):
Carolyn Webb de Massias. Gus writes there's well over two
hundred people on that staff, twenty five million dollars in salaries.
Carolyn Webb d Massias takes in three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year in salary and benefits. That's a
little bit more than Bass. And whatever happened to Brian K. Williams,
(28:58):
Bass's deputy in charge of public's Safety, who oversees as
deputy mayor the police and fire departments. Remember he was
the guy that the FBI did a raid on investigating
whether he called in a bomb threat to city Hall.
So what happened to him and who took over his work?
(29:20):
And what did Carolyn Webb de Messias do? Did she
not call Karen Bass? And remember yesterday with the names
of two other people who got the email on January two,
Christopher Anyaquo, whose Basses executive officer for emergency Operations. They
got an email from the emergency let's see the Emergency
(29:45):
Management Department, one hundred officials, including at least fifteen BASS aides.
And then another person. Let me see here, there's one
more woman named sand of Aal and she also got
(30:09):
the email. So who are all these people? They all
got the emails, they all had jobs regarding emergencies, and
they're all mentioned in these news stories and then there's
no no further, no further news on them. I don't understand.
(30:31):
So we're going to keep bringing up their names and
bringing up their salaries, and keep pointing out that they
got the warning email. And it's hard to believe that
nobody called. Nobody called Bass after all that. Ah, we
got Conway.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
Hey know, we have LAPD Chief Jim McDonald's coming on
with us at the top of the hour, So in
about ten minutes from now, you want to stick around
for that. And then your favorite meteorologist, Fritz Coleman. Ah
at six oh five. He does a comedy show that's
pretty hot.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I saw it. You went to see him? Yeah, a
couple of months ago. Yeah, he's great in North Hollywood. Yeah,
it's exactly right.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Yeah, once a month he does a unbelievable and then
we'll obviously talk about the rain. You know, if we
lived in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Saint Louis, New York, you
wouldn't mention the rain.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
No, no, it was just it.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
It's rain, But nobody would even on the air talk
about it. No, But here it's it's wall to wall.
I've always thought it was silly.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I think it. I think the first day I got here,
I think.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
I think the only reason people like to hear about
it is we all get excited when it rains. There's
much to say though. It rains, you get wet, you
dry out. You're right, there's not much to say yet.
But maybe next week when a lot of rain comes in,
there might be floods and stuff, Oh floods or something.
But I think we all get excited that. You know,
this reminds us of whatever state we came from, you know,
(31:52):
New Jersey, New York, Trio. Whatever it looks like home
right now for a little while, and then it goes
back to you know s I I yeah, it's nostalgia,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
That's exactly all right. All right, So let's say we
got a lot going on today, all right, Conway's coming
up thing tool with you. Michael Kurzer is the news
live in the KFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey, you've
been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can
always hear the show live on KFI Am six forty
from one to four pm every Monday through Friday, and
of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four o'clock, and then after four
we turned into a podcast, John Cobelt Show on Demand,
and that's where you go to listen to whatever you missed.
Now we're going to start this hour. I didn't know
if we'd ever get to this point to have a
(00:22):
conversation like we're going to have now with Todd Benzman.
Todd Bensman is the investigative journalist. He writes for the
Center for Immigration Studies and Todd has been covering the
border for about five years and it is remarkable what
he has seen, what he has explained. He wrote a
(00:44):
book on it called Overrun and now There's suddenly no
more problem at the border. And one of the things
he's written about this week at CIS dot org. There's
also an excerpt of it on the Daily Wire dot
com is how it blew to hell all the stupid
theories that were being pushed at us by politicians and
(01:06):
bureaucrats and media people and activists and non governmental groups,
the idea that well, you know, we have to go
look for the root causes of it. Maybe it's our
climate policy. It was never any of that. It was
just enforced the law and boom encounters. Your down ninety
(01:26):
six percent at the border. All the other stuff was
a lot of hot gas, and they knew it was
hot gas. But we've been hearing about this garbage for
twenty twenty five years. Let's get Todd. Ben's been on Todd.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Are you going to be out of work? Are you
gonna have to open up an ice cream shop? Or what?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Oh? God? You know, I'm thinking, well, there's a cartel
war gearing up down there. Maybe on that list, right,
But I mean it's true what you say, the greatest
mass migration in crisis in US history ever to have
stricken the United States. And I think, really any country
in the world is over. And I declare that openly
(02:12):
and with confidence at CIS dot orgon a big long
column that published yesterday, and I'd say that it took
all of about one hour to shut it down. We
are now at the lowest numbers that we've seen in
you know, at least half a century, maybe forever. And
(02:35):
we didn't need the big Senate bill that Harris was
always campaigning about. Oh, the Senate Bill, the Senate bill.
If only I had the Senate bill, we could have
stopped this thing. But Trump killed the Senate bill, and
we need the Senate bill. No, we didn't. We didn't
need the Senate bill. We didn't have to ever fix
root causes of other costies that right, root causes. That one.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It was getting too warm, so they were moving north
where the weather is cooler. That's what they were selling.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
None of that. All of it was bogus. All of
it was bogus. We knew it from the start. I
think I've been saying that to your audience now for
at least a couple of years. That's not what it was.
It never was. It was that they just simply let
everybody in. That's it's really quite a simple thing. You
if you let everybody in who comes to the border,
(03:30):
they'll be happy to drop the five or ten grand
in smuggling fees to do it. If you close, if
you make it, if you expel and deport them, they're
not willing to spend five or ten thousand dollars. You wouldn't,
I wouldn't, Nobody I knows, nobody I know would do
would drop cash like that if you knew you were
(03:50):
going to be expelled. And so Trump came in and
just did detention, deportation, expulsion. That's all. That's all it took.
It was over in an hour to sit within by
one o'clock on inauguration day, it was over.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And it was always in the laws, in the law, yeah,
the Immigration Naturalization Act. All you do is follow what
you're permitted to do, and you can drop it down
to near zero.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Right. And so I just published a piece I mean
literally fifteen minutes ago on the Daily Wires. Go to
the Daily Wires, got that in front of me here, right,
And I go into a lot more detail about these
other theories that the Democrats would put up to the
American public and sell, relentlessly, sell these theories about how
(04:44):
complex and long term and really we all just should
ball up into a fetal position and take the beating.
We just have no choice in any of this. It
just is happening to us, and we we just have
to manage it in like pain manage or something. Uh.
And I go into a lot more detail about the
(05:04):
you know why the Lankfort senateville that they that they
literally hinge the the Democrats hinge their entire presidential campaign
on that thing. We need the Senate bill and root
causes and climate change and all these other things that
we just have no choice but to just take it.
(05:24):
And all of that is buried now. It's intellectually untenable
to ever claim those things again, ever again, because there's
only one theory left standing in its mine and Trump's,
which is that if you close the gates, they stop coming.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, which to me was obvious. You know, if you
shut the door, nobody can come through. I I but
they always like to prattle on. And God, I must
have read this and seen it on television a thousands
of times, all the complex root cause it's a men
a multiply fascinated issue. It's like, no, it's not. It's
(06:05):
like your front door. If you lock it, nobody's getting
in the house. I was just baffled by all this.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Well, yeah, I called it like a revolution in common sense,
a common sense revolution, and immigration is like a perfect
example of that. There's nothing complicated about illegal immigration over
the border. There never was. It was always a super
It was so simple that nobody could believe that it
(06:34):
wasn't complex, you know, but there it is. You know, immigrants.
You know, I've interviewed thousands of immigrants over the last
four or five years on the trail, And where do
you think I came up with this crazy idea from them?
Why are you coming now? I would always ask them,
why are you coming now? Why didn't you come three
(06:55):
years ago? When Trump was in office. They're saying, well,
Biden opened the border, letting us in. That's why. I mean,
it's just not complicated.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Now that that's all there is to it. And I
think for the rest of our lives, no president's going
to try this again.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Well, you know, I don't know about that. You know.
What I'm what I'm arguing for is a deep burial
in the dung heap of bad, debunked ideas, policy ideas,
and you know, to salt the earth on top of
it so that they can never get out again, To
lock the crypt doors, you know, forever, and weld them
(07:38):
shut so that these these crazy ideas can never ever
get out into the public again. Uh, this is the
only theory that matters. It's not a theory now, it's
a proven fact on the ground. What how to how
to stop mass migration. That's it. And also oh yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
No, no, go ahead, go ahead, finish.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, you know, I was going to mention that, you know,
we spent on these other crazy theories, you know, billions
and billions of dollars. I mean, we gave Central America
I don't know, six or seven billion dollars to rebuild
their countries so that you know, people wouldn't want to leave.
And the entire time that we were giving them all
(08:24):
these billions of dollars, they were all leaving. And they're
still leaving, well not now, but you know, they all
the way up until Inauguration Day, they were leaving. And
one other thing is, you know, there are compliments to expulsion, deportation,
and detention, and one of them is a threat of
(08:48):
tariffs on Mexico to get their military out there and
give us a second layer of cordon, a second you know,
fence on their side where And they've been doing that
for a while now, rounding up immigrants on their side
of the border and shifting them back down to their
south and making them self deport what's happening now is
(09:10):
in addition to just there being you know, eight thousand
for the month of February eighty three hundred, which sounds
like a lot maybe, but compared to three hundred and
fifty thousand a month, eight thousand is a is a dream.
We haven't seen anything like that in many, many decades.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So that's the.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, they're reverse migration now, they're actually going the other
way through the Darien Gap to get away from our border.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Before you go, I just kind of mention one thing
you wrote actually made me laugh because you wrote about
the so called root causes strategy when Biden sent Kamala
Harris to the border with the theory that the well
what she said that the re and for all the
(10:02):
illegal crossings was because of extensive storm damage to do
due to extreme climate. We're looking at drought in a
region where agriculture is one of the most traditionally important
basis for their economy, and we're looking at what happens
in terms of food scarcity as a result of that.
So is climate change and drought and storm damage. I
don't know how you have storm damage and drought at
(10:23):
the same time, but you know it's those kind of
misdirection plays. And who looks up the climate of guatemale
El Salvador who pays attention to the weather down there.
You know, people go, oh, I guess, so I got
And it was all scammers. It was a racket. It
was a lot of crap.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
It was I mean, it stands exposed as you know,
a mass fraud. I mean, it really was like a
gigantic Ponzi scheme. And the way they use these theories,
these debunk theories, these disgraced theories, is that they wait
them around over here on the left so that your attention,
(11:02):
they draw your attention like a shiny babble over here
while they're opening the gate over there. That's where the
action is. But they're telling you we're doing something over here,
we're doing something over here that that's meaningful, and while
we're doing it, we're just going to keep this gate open.
That's how they used these theories. And I hope I
(11:23):
wrote this piece in the Daily Wire because I mean,
I hope it just absorbs that these these are discredited
constructs now and they need to just be completely exposed
lest they ever be resurrected. Somehow. Somebody could come back with, oh,
we've got to adjust root causes again. And by the way.
(11:44):
I point out at length in the in the Daily
Wire piece that we borrowed this crazy theory from the
progressive liberals in Europe who came up with it in
the eighties in the nineties, and they tried it. And
there are all these stuff budies all over the Internet
that the that the Europeans did that showed that it
(12:06):
never ever worked no for them. Every time they tried it,
it never worked. And these are like long term clinical
trials right that they had over there, and still we
stole it so it can be resurrected. These they can
rise from the grave. They can be stitched back together
like Frankenstein and brought back.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Todd, I gotta go, I gotta do news. But thank
you for coming on again.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Okay, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Todd Ben's been Senior National Security Fellows Center for Immigration
Studies and read his stuff at CIS dot Oregon, the
Daily Wire dot com New Stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI A
M six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You can follow us at John Cobelt Radio on all
the social media platforms at John coblt Radio. The New
York Post has some uh has a story on more
of the waste that they're finding in Washington, d C.
Trump and Musk And they have discovered that the Biden
(13:10):
administration funneled at least twenty billion dollars into environmental groups,
most of which had only recently been founded, recently been invented,
like these were not existing, long running environmental groups doing
good works. I'll give you an example. In one case,
(13:33):
Kamala Harris handed over a check of almost seven billion
dollars to something called Climate United Fund tim Bethesda, Maryland.
It is so new it does not appear in the
IRS Charities database. There are no federal filings for this group.
(13:54):
They got seven billion dollars. This is what was going
on the world of criminals. They could sniff it. A
lot of money is being handed out time to create
the fake charity, the fake nonprofit, the fake environmental climate group.
(14:18):
They were incorporated in Delaware on November thirtieth, twenty twenty three.
Five months later, Kamala Harris gives them gives seven billion
dollars in April of twenty twenty four. Then they whipped
up a press release announcing that the Climate United Fund
announced the historic investment, noting the group's work delivers benefits
(14:42):
like cleaner air and increased energy security. Cleaner air and
increased energy security, they didn't even exist seven months earlier. No,
five months earlier, they didn't even exist. How much clean
air could they have have produced? How much energy security?
Five months earlier? There was no such thing. There's also
(15:05):
no public accounting of how plans to spend the seven
billion dollars. I don't know what Kamala Harris's involvement there is.
They use the phrase handed over the cash. Some projects
they have announced included an eleven million dollar pre development loan,
a solar project on tribal lands at eastern Oregon and Idaho. Well,
(15:29):
that sounds like a racket. A thirty two million dollar
energy project at the University of Arkansas. But that's just
a small piece of the seven billion. The cash came
from a three hundred and seventy billion dollar climate such
slush fund overseen by John Podesta. Is the name sound familiar.
(15:54):
Podesta is now a political consultant who is the chairman
of Hillary Clinton's using presidential run, and he was once
White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton. Joe Biden
named Podesta ahead the climate fund. The money came from
the Inflation Reduction Act. It was three hundred and seventy
(16:17):
billion dollars and Podesta gets to decide who gets the cash.
So these grifters, these these frauds and criminals started creating
fake climate nonprofits and next thing you know, Karen Kamala
Harris has given seven billion dollars to Climate United Fund.
(16:38):
Nobody knows who works there. They just say they're for
cleaner air. Well, I guess so. And now you know,
you got to go back to that, to that video
that we played. We played the audio of one of
(16:58):
the EPA employees, Brent Front. He was the young guy
drinking and he was caught on video by Project Veritas.
He was caught on video saying, yeah, we dumped out
twenty billion dollars at the end of the Biden administration.
It was like the Titanic and we're throwing gold bars
off the edge. He now has an attorney representing him
(17:24):
and he's claiming he expressed his personal views and he
claimed the comments had nothing to do with all this
money that's being shoveled out. But he does have a
lawyer because they're they're trying, they're trying to clawback all
this all this funding the Climate United Fund. A spokesperson
said to the New York Post that the EPA encouraged
(17:47):
groups to work with coalitions to receive the money. What
does that mean, the money sent to Climate United Fund,
he's being parked with another nonprofit called Calvert Impact. Well,
the New York Post found that there are three three
(18:07):
entities called Calvert Impact, all of them in Bethesda, Maryland,
So it's hard to track the flow of money. Got
more coming up on this when we come back. And
there's one government agency that has been cut to one
staff member because the law requires at least one staff member,
(18:29):
so everybody else was sent home. There's one guy left
all by himself.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
That's lonely.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
That is very long. It's probably going to fire a
file of mental health claim.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Really, you're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI
A sixty oh.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Trump's speech was rough last night. The Speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson, his chief of staff, got arrested for DUI
on the way home.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Yeah, I just had that in my newscast. Yes, you
weren't listening.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
No, I wasn't listening. But there was also a Democratic
congressman who was there at the speech from Texas and
he went, how many died? I know, there's no reason
to get that upset over the speech. Jeez, So one
dou wine, one death. Trump makes people go crazy.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Very divisive, very divisive.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
All right. I was talking about this, this three one
hundred and seventy five billion dollar slush fund that the
EPA had from Joe Biden. And if you hear any propaganda,
any media liars trying to tell you, oh, I haven't
really found real money, was no substantiated. Yeah it has.
(19:46):
I just told you. Kamala Harris, I was in charge
of giving seven billion dollars to something called the Climate
United Fund seven billion, but the company was just invented
five month before it got the check. And it turns
(20:06):
out the seven billion was parked in another bank account.
And this bank account what was in the name of,
let me get this right, Calvert Impact. So the money
didn't go to Climate United Fund, it went to Calvert Impact.
(20:28):
And there's three of them, and there are all these
companies are in Bethesda, Maryland, so it's hard to track
the flow of money. Then there's another group called Justice
Climate Fund that was just invented in twenty twenty three,
it's never submitted a tax filing. There's no information about
who runs it on the website. But they got almost
(20:50):
a billion dollars from the EPA. A billion dollars for
a company that didn't exist on paper until twenty twenty three,
exist with the IRS, and does not seem to have
anyone working for it if you go to the website.
But it drives transformative investments. We're focused on reducing pollution
(21:12):
nine hundred and forty million. See, they handed out the
money and then the criminals in Washington created a fake nonprofit.
This is what they do in Los Angeles with the
homeless money. It's the same thing. I guarantee you every
time they find out there's new homeless tax money coming in,
like we passed another homeless tax in November, more fake
nonprofits connected to all the criminals on the city council
(21:38):
start filing paperwork and they're going to get money. Here's
another group that the EPA shoveled money at, Power Forward
Communities registered in twenty twenty three. They got two billion dollars.
This is the one Stacy Abrams is involved in, the
former Democrat who ran for governor. She was a hot
(21:58):
thing for a five minute's power Forward Communities has one
hundred dollars in revenue according to its tax filing for
twenty twenty three. Another fake company Rewiring America. Another one
(22:18):
registered in December of twenty twenty four, and they're getting
a big load of money. This is massive, overwhelming corruption
by the billions. Then you had this announcement from DOGE.
There was something called the inter American Foundation. Everybody's getting
(22:44):
fired except for one guy they're keeping, the director of
the Office of Foreign Assistance. His name is Peter Morocco,
and that's it. Everybody else is gone.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Does he have to work in person?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Actually he's got another job. He's been put in charge
of cutting fore and spending. So really they got rid
of everybody, and then Musk and Trump put one of
their own guys in because according to law, there has
to be at least one employee. This agency had forty
(23:28):
eight people, average salary one hundred and thirty one thousand
dollars a year, and all they seemed to do was
send out checks to foreign entities. Morocco and DOJ officials
(23:52):
marched into the agency's headquarters on Monday and declared Morocco
to be in charge and demanded access to all the data.
It's supposed to issue grants to countries in Latin America
and the Caribbean for localized community led development. What communities
have they developed? In fact, that's the question I have
about the whole You always hear about developing countries, and
(24:16):
ever since I was a kid, it's been the same
list of developing countries. When do they get developed? They've
gotten hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of dollars from US,
and they never got developed. Why is that? Where'd the
money go? When you send money for development? What do
(24:36):
they spend it on? This inter American Foundation was created
in nineteen sixty nine. It's awarded almost six thousand grants,
almost a billion dollars, and it uh, oh, here's some
of the here's some of their grants. Oh you'll like
this nine hundred thousand dollars for alpaca farming and.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Oh that's okay.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
How packers are cute? They kind of look like lamas, right, yes, yeah,
three hundred and sixty five thousand dollars to reduce social
discrimination of recyclers in Bolivia.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I don't understand that exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
You're not supuzzed. So in Bolivia. Recyclers are socially discriminated.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Against because they recycle.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Because they recycle, I guess people they go into.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
People's trash, and so people they don't. They make fun
of them from putting into trash cards.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, you're a dumpster. These are dumpster divers, yes, And
they get mocked. And now they're getting three hundred and
sixty five thousand dollars to lessen the pain.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
The people are still going to mock them, right.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I would think, yeah, but at least they're a little richer.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Eight hundred thousand dollars for vegetable gardens and L Salvador.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Oh lovely.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I think the L. Salvadorans know how to plant vegetables.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Maybe they don't. They need some help.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
No wonder, people are hungry down there. They don't know
how to plant a seed. Three hundred thousand dollars to
promote cultural understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil. Seven hundred
thousand dollars to improve the marketability of mushrooms and peas
in Guatemala.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Okay, I'll do it for.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
A lot less. Well, people don't like mushrooms and peas,
so this is like an.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I'll promote it for like I said, a lot less.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Here's seven hundred thousand dollars to expand fruit and jam
sales in Honduras. Wow, here's a half million dollars to
improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador. Forty thousand dollars for
bee keeping in Brazil. So I think they're cutting about
(27:02):
one hundred percent of all the programs for this agency.
And Musk stuck in one of his own guys there
just to meet the requirements of the law. So I
don't think this guy's going to show up.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
I don't think so. I was gonna say if he does,
if he's lonely, maybe he'll bring his dog.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
More coming up.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
We are never going to let that incompetent idiot Los
Angeles mayor Karen Bass rest anything I can find. And
Daniel Gus says something today. We've we had him on yesterday,
Daniel Guss at substack dot substack dot com and he
covers city Hall and he found another name who's been
(27:49):
keeping her head down in this fire scandal. Where were
where was Carolyn Webb de Messias? You ever hear that name.
She is Bass's chief of staff. And why this matters
is Bass is claiming that nobody told her about the
(28:09):
fire warnings. And we found out yesterday that one hundred
people in LA government got an email on January second,
the Thursday before the Tuesday fire, including about fifteen Bass
staff members and chief of staff would be at the top.
(28:31):
Carolyn Webb de Massias. Gus writes there's well over two
hundred people on that staff, twenty five million dollars in salaries.
Carolyn Webb d Massias takes in three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year in salary and benefits. That's a
little bit more than Bass. And whatever happened to Brian K. Williams,
(28:58):
Bass's deputy in charge of public's Safety, who oversees as
deputy mayor the police and fire departments. Remember he was
the guy that the FBI did a raid on investigating
whether he called in a bomb threat to city Hall.
So what happened to him and who took over his work?
(29:20):
And what did Carolyn Webb de Messias do? Did she
not call Karen Bass? And remember yesterday with the names
of two other people who got the email on January two,
Christopher Anyaquo, whose Basses executive officer for emergency Operations. They
got an email from the emergency let's see the Emergency
(29:45):
Management Department, one hundred officials, including at least fifteen BASS aides.
And then another person. Let me see here, there's one
more woman named sand of Aal and she also got
(30:09):
the email. So who are all these people? They all
got the emails, they all had jobs regarding emergencies, and
they're all mentioned in these news stories and then there's
no no further, no further news on them. I don't understand.
(30:31):
So we're going to keep bringing up their names and
bringing up their salaries, and keep pointing out that they
got the warning email. And it's hard to believe that
nobody called. Nobody called Bass after all that. Ah, we
got Conway.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
Hey know, we have LAPD Chief Jim McDonald's coming on
with us at the top of the hour, So in
about ten minutes from now, you want to stick around
for that. And then your favorite meteorologist, Fritz Coleman. Ah
at six oh five. He does a comedy show that's
pretty hot.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I saw it. You went to see him? Yeah, a
couple of months ago. Yeah, he's great in North Hollywood. Yeah,
it's exactly right.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Yeah, once a month he does a unbelievable and then
we'll obviously talk about the rain. You know, if we
lived in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Saint Louis, New York, you
wouldn't mention the rain.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
No, no, it was just it.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
It's rain, But nobody would even on the air talk
about it. No, But here it's it's wall to wall.
I've always thought it was silly.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I think it. I think the first day I got here,
I think.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
I think the only reason people like to hear about
it is we all get excited when it rains. There's
much to say though. It rains, you get wet, you
dry out. You're right, there's not much to say yet.
But maybe next week when a lot of rain comes in,
there might be floods and stuff, Oh floods or something.
But I think we all get excited that. You know,
this reminds us of whatever state we came from, you know,
(31:52):
New Jersey, New York, Trio. Whatever it looks like home
right now for a little while, and then it goes
back to you know s I I yeah, it's nostalgia,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
That's exactly all right. All right, So let's say we
got a lot going on today, all right, Conway's coming
up thing tool with you. Michael Kurzer is the news
live in the KFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey, you've
been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can
always hear the show live on KFI Am six forty
from one to four pm every Monday through Friday, and
of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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